


I'm Flying in Winchester Cathedral

by EmrysProngs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Sam, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, One Shot, Sam Winchester Character Study, sam winchester meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 20:17:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmrysProngs/pseuds/EmrysProngs
Summary: Sam had a sneaking suspicion that he was being ostracized by graveyards. That they prattled, gossiped, and cast judgmental glances toward the Winchester boys.





	I'm Flying in Winchester Cathedral

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot I wrote for a roleplay on Tumblr that I ended up liking quite a lot. Just a little look at Sam Winchester and his thoughts on graveyards - and their thoughts on him. 
> 
> If you're inclined to follow my Sam on Tumblr he's over at thestanfordmoose.tumblr.com

Sam had a sneaking suspicion that he was being ostracized by graveyards. That they prattled, gossiped, and cast judgmental glances toward the Winchester boys.

The ones who never brought flowers. Never huddled against engraved granite to mourn.

The two men who would kick up the dirt around a grave as they ran through it. Who vandalized plots by upchucking the dirt, scattering mud and the final prayers of a funeral with rusted shovels. Who set bodies aflame when the Graveyard had just been protecting them, cloaking them in warmth and sanctuary, pressing the dead against their breast and offering sleep.

The tall one, the Graveyard would say, who was always thrown into the headstones, smacking his head against _“A loving Daughter, Sister, Mother, and Friend.”_ The handsome one with short hair, who would shoot his gun into the navy sky and not give a damn where the rounds landed - even if it was the grandmother who was buried last month.

No _respect_ for cemeteries.

Sam isn’t sure if he’s become numb to death as a whole, or just the arbitrary way we perform burials and leave the bodies to rot in the soil. Human fertilizer. He’s been either digging up graves himself, or watching John and Dean do it since he was 6. Headstones and funerals - real ones, with black ties and obituaries and decorated caskets - have long since lost their significance, the lack of distinction between dying and the final home of the dead makes Sam feel a bit ill. He hates what hunting has done to him.

Speaking of, he hates hunter’s funerals, too. He hates that out of the ingrained paranoia all hunters have - and don’t talk about - they leave nothing behind. He may not find graveyards to be a place of remembrance and mourning, but he admires them conceptually. There is somewhere in the world that you feel belongs to the person who has left you - where the rift between worlds is just a little thinner. If you speak to their tomb, they will hear the stutter in your tear-clogged words. If you lay flowers, they will smell the pollen and let it tickle their nose.

Everything is a “sign” when you’re at graveyard. Every whistle of wind in the trees is the oxygen from the one you lost. A butterfly nearby, that’s them, too, reassuring you. Everyone is a believer here. Everyone is human, pounding with faith and longing.

Hunter’s, though, they just let it all turn to ash. Precautionary, they say, and Sam understands, he does, but he doesn’t like it. When fear drives your actions, you’re impulsive. They ended up having to burn Bobby’s flask, too. Losing the thing that grounded them and connected them to the man who had become their father. They have nowhere to visit. No tangibility in any of their loss because it’s all lit up in smoke. Arson of the dead.

The last flowers he ever laid were for Jess.

Sam loathes to think about how once enough time passes, none of these graves will get visitors anymore.

His relationship with graveyards is a fickle thing. He doubts Dean has ever put so much thought into it, but now, standing in the center of Arlington Cemetery, he can’t stop. Here is where America honors the dead of the conflicts they’re embarrassed they fought. Collects them all together with stark white granite and a memorial to try and diminish the guilt - Sam doesn’t think it works.

The perished of the Civil War are here. Soldiers were originally meant to join their kin at the United States Soldiers’ Cemetery in Washington, D.C., or Alexandria Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia, but by 1863 - they were full. And how ironic is that? We continue to fight and murder and forget the value of human life only to deny entry into a place of rest because… well, we killed too many. No more room at the inn.

The first military burial at Arlington, for William Henry Christman, was made on May 13, 1864. He stands there now, the engravement starting to erode, and the edges where the site was first dug up long since turned to grass and daisy seedlings. Nearly 154 years to the day.

He bends a knee, ignoring the smudges of green that stain his jeans.  
Sam hasn’t forgotten how to mourn. He just does it alone now. Does it against fire and ash and soot.

He’s jealous of them all, and their ability to die; to sleep unaided.


End file.
